


Sanguine and the Wastelander

by glasscannon



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Furiosa's Citadel, Gen, New Citadel, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Insert Week 2016, Vuvalini at the Citadel, Wasteland Weekend persona, new Vuvalini, ~1000 days post-Joe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6833356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/glasscannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some seven hundred days after coming to the Citadel, Sanguine sights a stranger through the scope of her rifle, walking in out of the Wasteland.  In her world of Vuvalini and War Boys, farming and longgun watch duties, where could this Wastelander possibly fit?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanguine and the Wastelander

**Author's Note:**

> When I saw the announcement on Tumblr for Self-Insert Week 2016, I thought I'd use it as an opportunity to explore Sanguine, my new-Vuvalini persona for Wasteland Weekend. Also making an appearance is Taunt, aka my irl sister and tireless beta-reader Jezunya.
> 
> I expect this will have six or seven chapters, and feature cameos from a few Fury Road characters, as well as my vision of what the Citadel under Furiosa's leadership might look like. Please subscribe for updates, and let me know what you think!

By the time Mara wiggled her way onto the shaded watchtower platform hidden high in the Green, Sanguine had been watching the Wastelander down her scope for nearly an hour, her finger lying relaxed beside the trigger of her longgun.

“This better be good, girlie,” the older Vuvalini sighed, pulling out a pair of binoculars and settling in on her stomach.  “The entire point of living on one of the Outer Shelves was that I _wouldn’t_ have to do all that climbing.

“I know, sorry,” the younger woman answered, blushing slightly, “but I really wanted your opinion on this one.”

“Hmph,” Mara grumped, raising the binoculars to follow Sanguine’s line of sight north out into the desert beyond the as-yet-unoccupied Outer Towers.  “A man, I’d say,” she said after a moment, “broad in the shoulder, so he’s had access to food recently, but his clothing says he’s been sleeping rough awhile now.  He’s just been walking towards us?”

Sanguine nodded, though they were both still sighting down their optics.  “No vehicle plumes since I started watch, either.  Just him, walking.”

“Night watch didn’t report anything, either.  But there’s no water in that direction for _days_ , he’s gotta be coming from somewhere.”

“Weren’t we all, at some point?” Sang asked, something in her tone not exactly rhetorical.

Mara lowered the binoculars and pushed up on her elbows.  “You got a good feeling about this one, then, girlie?”

Sang shrugged, shoulders stiff from hours in the sniper blind.  “I’d like to invite him into the Shade.”

Mara hmphed again and muttered under her breath, “As though we don’t already have enough men around here,” but seemed to soften as she regarded the younger Vuvalini, daughter of her own initiate sister, long buried.  “How’s your perch shooting?” she asked, not waiting for an answer.  “Take a bike and a War Boy out there, keep the Wastelander in your sights, if he checks out up close, bring him in.”

Sanguine groaned and looked up from her scope for the first time since Mara’s arrival.  “Do I _have_ to take a War Boy?  I can shoot from the front of a bike just as well as the back, it’s not like it’ll be a high-speed chase.”

“Take your sister, at least,” Mara replied, raising her binoculars again to find the stranger, loping easily through the dunes.  “I trust Taunt to smack you upside the head before you do anything stupid.”

“Fiiiine,” the younger woman grumbled, knowing it was the best compromise she was likely to get.  “Thank you, Mara.”  Sang looked down her scope for one more glimpse of the Wastelander, then snapped the safety on her gun and started backing out of the narrow sniper blind.

“Have someone hand me up my rifle, I’ll take your watch until you get back,” Mara said, waving away Sanguine’s half-started suggestion of getting one of the others.  “I’m here now, might as well be useful.”

“I’ll get back as quick as I can,” Sang promised instead, looping her rifle over her shoulder and using the toes of her boots to find the first rungs of the hemp rope ladder that led down from the platform.

“I’ll be watching,” Mara replied, not looking back at her, and Sang nodded and took to the ladder.

Pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head, Sanguine stepped into the sun-dappled dimness of the Green that surrounded the watchtower and covered every inch of their north-facing cliff from edge to wall, spilling over, brushing against any exposed skin.  Their crew moved the watchtower platforms with each harvest, rotating to paddies in the last stage of growth, always a different configuration among the hemp stalks that by harvest-time grew higher than even their tallest Green Boy could reach, and that provided perfect camouflage for watching the desert floor below. 

Quickly making her way down the path through the hemp and into the momentarily blinding sunshine that had her reaching for her sunglasses again, Sang continued past between fields grown barely knee-high, and into the main crossroads of life on the Ledge clustered at the foot of the outer wall of the Tower, filled with more of her crewmates than anywhere else.  She paused to ask one of the Green Pups to take Mara’s rifle to her before making her way to the rope ladder secured against the outer wall that led up and back into the rest of the Citadel proper, and the long circuitous route to Tower Three.

The hemp ladder leading inside was more than twice the height of the sniper blind, and Sanguine scaled it quickly, feeling exposed against the bare rock of the Tower, finally pulling herself over the threshold and into the cool dark of the passageway that led to their Outer Ledge.  Glasses safely stowed in one of her many pockets, she followed the passage to its first turn off, taking the sharp right that led towards one of the other Towers.

This time of the day, Taunt was likely to be in the Garages, unless High Imperator Toast had taken her crew out for a raid, or a practice run – but even then, someone in the Garages would know.  They saw each other less now, since Taunt had taken a position with the prime raiding crew, and this stretch of five or six days apart, while sadly typical for them now, would have been unthinkable even just two hundred days ago.  Sang missed her sister, of course, but it was hard to argue with the beaming joy on Taunt’s face as she described her Imperator’s pride in her work.

Besides, Sanguine reminded herself as she started up a series of steep switchbacks that led to the nearest bridge, the High Council was adamant about integrating every work crew now, no segregation between War Boy and ex-Wretched and the still-in-gathering Vuvalini anymore.  This was just their part of it, and their familial relationship made both their crews stronger, not weaker.  Still, it was difficult to adjust to, and the long walk gave Sang plenty of time to dwell on the literal distances between her and her younger sister, after so much of their lives spent hardly out of one another’s sight.

She paused at the door to don her tinted glasses again, and then let herself out into the harsh sunshine of the upper bridge leading to Tower Three, stepping to the side and leaning against the railing to allow two War Boys to pass, exchanging neutral nods with each before starting across the bridge at a brisk pace.  From this angle she could just barely make out the Wastelander between two of the Outer Towers, a dark line against the sand.  Still too far out to be within range of any of their standard patrols, but there were other watches facing that direction, every angle covered in triplicate, so Sanguine knew she couldn’t be the only one to have spotted him.  But she was likely to be the first with a clean shot at him, and that made him feel like _hers_ , somehow.  If anyone was going to kill the stranger she’d watched for so many long minutes, it’d be her.

One of the Outer Towers slid between them as she progressed across the bridge, and she swung her gaze away, up to the Green atop Tower Three instead.  It wasn’t that she was afraid of heights, exactly – she was a sniper who lived on a cliff on the edge of a plateau, watching the desert floor below for hours at a time, she was fine with _that_ sort of height.  But this was different.  The bridge hardly had a floor at all, she’d found out the hard way her first trip across, just metal in grid patterns bolted over steel girders, with more girders forming waist-high railings.  And from there it was a very long way down to the canopies of the Shade on her left and the open desert on the right, with naught between a body but the open air and a stray bird, if you were lucky.  So Sang kept her gaze to the Green on the peaks and the quick spin of the windmills in the mid-morning breeze – and to the door looming larger in front of her.

Safely back inside and sunglasses stowed, Sang straightened her longgun across her back and concentrated on finding her way downward through the less-familiar halls, unwilling to have to stoop to asking for directions to the Garages in a place she’d lived in for almost seven hundred days.  She found it with a minimum of confusion, the smells of grease and guzzoline and hot metal growing stronger as she neared and entered one of the repair bays through a spacious side doorway, double metal doors propped open with bits of engine block and piles of rocks.

A War Boy whose name she almost remembered, standing nearly two heads taller than her, caught her eye from across the open hood of a large truck and motioned her over with a sharp jut of his chin, then turned to face deeper into the bay:

“YO TAUNT!” he yelled, cupping grease-smeared hands around his mouth, and despite the number of days Sanguine had spent among the War Boys, she still had to repress a jolt at the noise, reverberating off the high stone ceiling.  “TAUNT!  YOUR SISTER’S HERE, TAUNT!”

“I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME, YOU WALNUT!” Taunt hollered back from several vehicle lengths into the Garages, her particular brand of acerbic affection evident in her tone, and Sanguine offered the tall, now-grinning War Boy a quick nod of thanks before following the sound further into the room, as a few other War Boys sing-songed back at Taunt, “WALLS DON’T HAVE NUTS!”

Taunt made an indecent noise back at them as she walked out from around a large convoy vehicle, wiping her hands on a rag, then stepped towards her sister, right hand extended at jaw level for the traditional Vuvalini greeting.

But Sanguine jerked back, making a face.  “You are absolutely _covered_ in grease,” she said, “stay put and keep your hands to yourself, I’ll do this myself – and do _not_ headbutt me, I swear to the Mothers.”

Taunt narrowed her eyes and smirked back, but more or less did as asked, as Sanguine cupped the back of her skull and gently brought their foreheads together, aiming for an area of her younger sister’s forehead with slightly less black paint than others.  They both relaxed into the familiarity of the greeting, and in the quiet air between them some of Taunt’s bravado seemed to fall away with a sigh.

“Heya,” she said into their shared space, “so what’s up?”

Sanguine released her and leaned back to look at her sister.  Before Taunt had cut her long golden hair, they’d been nearly indistinguishable, despite the eight hundred day gap between their births.  Taunt had inherited their mother’s hips and Sanguine their father’s, Sang kept her hair long and decorated in the Vuvalini tradition, while Taunt’s was now cut in a style favored by High Imperator Furiosa and other women on the High Council, but in much else, they were identical: fifteen and a half hands and nine and a half stone, eyes like water and skin in a constant grudge match with the sun, average among their mother’s tribe but small and strange to the War Boys.  It was no wonder Taunt’s crewmates could identify Sanguine so quickly, she thought.

“There’s a stranger, walking in out of the Wasteland,” Sang said, “watched him down scope for a while and then had Mara take a look.  She said I could take a bike out to check him out, but only if you go with me.”

“Walking in from the north?  He’s probably half crazed from lack of water, might not be worth the guzz to drive all the way around to check him out.”

Sang shrugged, prepared for at least a little push back.  “He has a flask, I’ve seen him drinking from it, but he does seem to be rationing it.  All the more reason to get to him quickly.”

Taunt considered her for a moment, eyes narrowed.  “There’s somethin’ about him?”

“There’s somethin’ about him,” Sang agreed quietly, nodding.

Her sister watched her another moment, then nodded as well.  “Okay, I’m about due for a break anyway.  But I wanna _see_ this guy before we drive all the way out to the north side.”

“If we go now, I think he’ll still be visible from the upper bridge.”

“Yeah that’ll work, just let me tell my Imperator where I’m going and grab my optics.”

—o—

Ten minutes later and they were back on the bridge, perched awkwardly near the midpoint to watch the Wastelander’s slow progress.

“You think he walks like Dad,” Taunt said after a few long seconds, still watching through her binoculars.

“What?  No he doesn’t.”  Sang looked down the scope of her rifle again, tracking the man’s steps in the far distance.

“Sure he does.  That broad-shouldered, arm swinging thing, Dad always looked like that coming back to camp after a long time away.”

“Huh, I hadn’t noticed,” was all Sanguine could say.

“Shut up, of course you did, at some level at least, or we wouldn’t be here.  Also, I think if we go out there, we’re going to have to test Dad’s Axiom, because I’m pretty sure he’s singing.”

“Yeah,” Sang sighed, drawing the word out, “he was doing that earlier, too.”

“‘There are only three reasons to sing in the Wasteland,’” Taunt quoted, “‘out of joy, out of madness, or out of a desire to intimidate.  Be clear on your reasons before you open your mouth.’”

They were both silent a long moment.  “Dad was always singing with joy by the time we could see him in the scopes,” Sanguine offered quietly.

Taunt swore creatively under her breath, an odd combination of Vuvalini and War Boy profanities.  “There is something about him.  Mothers, I hate it when you’re right.”

Sang smiled up at her from her crouch.  “I’ll let you drive,” she offered.

But her sister just snorted.  “Like that was even a question.”

—o—

They located Taunt’s goggles and a pair that fit Sang, and checked out a tank of guzz and a motorcycle with a sniper perch, putting Mara’s name down under Imperator on the checkout sheets, should the expenditure be questioned, then wound their way through the wide, sloping route down to the Lifts, guiding the bike easily between them.

“So does this make you a War Boy then?” Sanguine teased, not for the first time.

“Gross, shut up,” Taunt replied, shoving her over the top of the bike playfully.  “Of course I’m still Vuvalini.”

“War Girl?  War… Vuvalini?  Warvulini?”

“Yeah, okay, that’s the one, we’re keeping that one.  Warvulini, I am a Warvulini.  That works,” Taunt laughed.

They made their way down to the Lifts and waited for a turn at the platform in the usual mid-day bustle of Repair Boys and traders, finally exiting onto the busy sandy floor of the Shade a few minutes later.  The multi-tiered, overlapping canopies that stretched between the Towers, for which the Shade was named, did indeed block much of the harshness of the sun high in the sky above, reducing the light to a dim glow and lending the air a pleasant coolness.  In the hundreds of days since the canopies were erected, their great shadow had become a refuge for travelers of all sorts, their multi-colored tents and booths forming a semi-permanent bazaar, organized in roughly formed rows and little else.  The flat-packed road curved gently southward toward the Gate, past stands of food and items for barter from both the Citadel and the outside world, and the several hundred people roaming the dusty paths between them. 

Sanguine scanned the crowd of unfamiliar faces uneasily.  The Shade was less regulated than The Citadel itself, and though the War Boys did screen incomers at the Gate, it was made up mostly of drifters and nomads and traders.  Sanguine could feel her sister tense up ever so slightly as they made their way through the crowds, and knew she had done the same.  But the Gate loomed large in front of them, great clanking metal doors with watchmen pacing the tops of the Wall on either side, the sight of armed War Boys more reassuring than Sang would have ever thought possible when they first came to this place.

Once signed out and let through the Gate, they pulled their goggles on and revved up the motorcycle, with Taunt driving and Sanguine clinging to the sniper perch in back.  They rode west around the tall metal and rock Wall that surrounded the three Inner Towers, circling around to the north side, Taunt curving their pathway outwards from the Wall to loop around one of the Outer Towers and come at the Wastelander from his forward flank.

He came into sight as they rounded the Outer Tower, still a mile or two out under the bright sunshine while they were momentarily in the narrow shadow of the Tower.  Sanguine tapped Taunt on the shoulder and her sister took the signal to slow the bike to a stop while they were still mostly hidden, before he seemed to have seen them.

Sang removed her rifle from her back and stood up on the perch, sighting the Wastelander down her scope and watching him for a long moment.

“He’s still singing, isn’t he?” Taunt asked, deadpan.

Humming an affirmative, Sanguine lowered her rifle.  “So we test Dad’s Axiom, and if he passes, we invite him into the Shade, yeah?”

“Eh, sure,” Taunt shrugged, downplaying it in what Sang knew was a sign of mild anxiety.  “But promise me you won’t hesitate to shoot him in the head if he’s anything but, I don’t care how much you like guys with broad shoulders.”

“Of course not.  Shut up.”

Taunt laughed and got them underway, Sang once again seated and clutching the perch with her legs, but this time with her longgun held at the ready, and within a few moments they were clear of the Outer Tower and racing across the hard-packed sand towards the Wastelander. 


End file.
